Paralyzed
by 17child-of-the-moon17
Summary: How can you fight back, when you can't see or touch your attacker? SasuSaku, rated T for language and future sexual situations.
1. Part One

Wanted to try my hand at something slightly scary. To my LAL readers, I apologize for not uploading the next chapter. It's halfway finished, but I'm having trouble finding inspiration for it at the moment due to my new living/working conditions. (I did get a job, and it's as a nanny. I'm living with the mom and her kids, so free time is at a bare minimum. As it is, I'm at school right now. XD)

* * *

The supernatural has always been a source of curiosity and fear for the human race as a whole. Curiosity, because seeing something "from the other side" means there is proof of a life after death. Fear, because that something may not be what you expect. Fear, because you may not be able to fight back.

**~ Paralyzed, Part One ~**

The sound of her alarm clock angrily beeping at her to wake up pulled Sakura Haruno, age twenty, from the blissful world of her dreams to the decidedly colder reality of her apartment's bedroom. Groaning, she managed to push her arm through her layers of warm blankets into the cool air of her room and slapped her hand onto the top of the source of the obnoxious beeping, fingers searching for the snooze button. She sighed as she pulled her arm back into the warmth of her bed and started to doze off again.

That is, until she remembered that she had a medical terminology test in precisely twenty-four minutes and she still had to take a shower.

"Shit!" she cried, wincing as she violently tossed the covers off of her body and jumped to the carpeted floor. Ripping her towel from the back of her desk chair, she raced into the adjoined bathroom, not even bothering to shut the door, and twisted the shower handle on. Deciding not to wait for the water to warm up, she struggled out of her pajamas and braved the icy temperature of the water, rubbing at her eyes to wake herself up more completely.

Mentally reviewing the most recent chapter she had learned in her class, she scrubbed at her hair and body, trying to wake up as much as possible because she just _knew_ she'd have to deal with not having any coffee this morning.

Finishing in a record time of eight minutes, she turned the water off and dried herself, running into her room again to find her scrubs. She always told her fashion-savvy best friend, Ino, that the best part of going to college to be a doctor was that she got to wear scrubs if she didn't feel like dressing up. Of course, Ino was always appalled that her friend wouldn't spend at least an hour before school prettying up and trying to look her absolute best.

Running back to her bathroom, she brushed her damp hair, frowning because now she knew it was going to be frizzy since she was letting it air-dry. Staring longingly at her hair drier for a second, she turned and ran to her desk, shoving her books for the morning into her backpack and simultaneously scanning the room for her sneakers. Spotting them peeking out from under her bed, she sat down and pulled them on, quickly tying them and jumping up to grab her bag. After one last cursory glace around to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything, she ran out of her room, through the living room, and out the door, locking it and sprinting for the stairs.

* * *

"Sakura Haruno…" her professor called, just as she sat down at her desk.

"I'm here," she called breathlessly, having run the quarter mile her apartment building was from the school campus. Some of her classmates snickered at her disheveled appearance, and she ignored it, pulling out a pen and taking some deep breaths.

Having reached the end of the role call, the professor cleared his throat and said, "Remember: cell phones are off and in your bags, books under your desks, and no talking. This test will be easy if you studied." A few students shifted nervously in their seats at that last remark, and Sakura let out a puff of breath. It was a good thing she had studied the night before, apparently.

As soon as the professor ordered them to begin, she flipped her test over and went about the monotonous task of answering the questions.

* * *

"Geeze, Forehead. No coffee this morning? Or did you just wake up late," Ino asked, grinning at her friend's slightly frizzy hair and wrinkled scrubs.

"Shut it, Pig," Sakura replied, grinning back. "I set my alarm for eight-thirty last night, but I had forgotten that I had the test first thing this morning, so I had about twenty minutes to get ready."

Ino grimaced. "No wonder you look like hell. What else do you have going on today?" she asked, walking towards one of the lunch tables in the cafeteria.

Sakura took a bite of her pear, chewing slowly before answering. "Nothing, really. I have the day off from work, and I don't have any night classes tonight." Pulling out one of the chairs and sitting down, she looked at the blonde. "Why? Did you have something planned?"

Also sitting down, Ino smirked. "Yeah, actually. You know that house over by where the old town library used to be?"

Sakura inwardly sighed. "The one that's supposedly haunted? Seriously, Ino? We're adults, not kids looking for a good scare because of an old bedtime story."

Ino leaned forward on her elbows, propping her chin up with her fists. "Why are you so against it? Is wittle Sakuwa a fwaidy cat?" She laughed as her friend threw a chunk of pear at her face. "No, but seriously. Why don't you want to go?"

Sakura scrunched up her face in consternation. "I dunno. I just don't think it's such a good idea. I mean, what if the cops just happen to be driving by and catch us in there? That could ruin this whole scholarship thing that I've got going on, you know? I just don't want to risk it."

Ino was about to say something when a guy in a bright orange shirt ran over, dragging another student behind him. "Sakura! You're going, right? Ino, did you tell her yet? Shikamaru said he's coming with us! Right, Shikamaru?" he asked excitedly, glancing behind himself at the one he had been pulling along.

"Naruto, would you _please_ not try to dislocate my arm the next time you want me to follow you? You're such a pain in the ass," Shikamaru groaned, rubbing his sore shoulder.

Ino jumped up and smacked Naruto upside the head. "You idiot! Stop hurting my baby!" Before Naruto, or anyone else for that matter, could get another word in, Ino turned and attached herself to her boyfriend and started cooing and kissing his shoulder. Shikamaru rolled his eyes and muttered something about "troublesome women."

Sakura giggled at the scene. "In answer to your question, Naruto-"

"Yes, she's going," Ino said in an 'and that's final' tone and went back to fawning over her boyfriend again.

Before Sakura could protest, Naruto punched his fist up into the air and gave a whoop of joy. "This is gonna be so epic, Sakura! We're gonna have so much fun! I heard so many creepy stories about that place, it's not even funny! Choji told me that he heard from Lee who heard it from Tenten who heard it from… was it Genma? I dunno, but I heard that there was this one kid…"

Sakura tuned him out, concentrating on eating her pear. She didn't really care about the stories. The sooner this day was over, the sooner she'd be able to go home after the stupid haunted house thing and get some much-needed rest.

* * *

Sakura shivered in her black hoodie as she stood with the rest of the group outside of the old Hillside Manor. The hazy glow of the moon was just starting to push through the dark clouds overhead, casting an ethereal glow about the fenced-in property. A chilly breeze swept through the trees and past the group of college students, heading down the dimly lit, dead-end street behind them. Somewhere off in the woods behind the nineteenth century house, an owl hooted morosely.

"Well," Sakura stated aloud. "It's no wonder people think this place is haunted. The property itself is giving me the creeps."

Choji laughed. "This? This is nothing. I've been to a place with my dad where the _air_ makes you nauseous with fear. This place isn't scary at all." Being the group supernatural fanatic, Choji knew just about everything about anything paranormal. He and his family had traveled all over the place looking for haunted houses, hotels, and cemeteries, and to top it off, he was a horror movie buff.

Sakura sighed. "Whatever. Can we just get this over with? I want to be able to get at least _some_ sleep tonight."

Naruto laughed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "No worries, Sakura. I'll protect you," he said, winking at her and grinning mischievously. Sakura huffed and ducked out from under his arm, walking ahead of the group.

"So, why didn't Hinata and Kiba come with us?" Sakura asked over her shoulder.

Naruto shrugged nonchalantly. "I guess they're not into the whole ghost thing. Hinata's super religious and Kiba doesn't go anywhere unless she does, being lovesick and all." He snickered when Sakura looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes at him.

Sakura faced forward once again, surveying her surroundings nervously. Something about the place felt wrong, but she figured it was just because she felt strange trespassing onto someone else's property, even if that someone was quite dead and had been for about a century. The last owner left town two months after moving into the house for unknown reasons about four years ago. They hadn't stayed long enough to make friends and consequently, no factual information had ever been divulged amongst the townsfolk.

However, there were stories that people liked to tell. They were mostly created to keep kids off the property on Halloween, and most people didn't believe them. There were some who did, but mostly just the "spiritualists" and the elderly. No one ever took them seriously as it was, and when it came to ghost stories, they were even less credible sources for the truth.

One of those stories about the last owner was that he had been pushed down the stairs by an unseen force, tossed around against the walls of the foyer, and literally thrown out the door before it slammed and locked itself.

Another one was that he had been pulled from his bed and dragged down the stairs to the first floor on one occasion before he ran out the door screaming.

There were more stories that were more outlandish that she hadn't bothered paying attention to. These two were the ones that scared her, though. She had always been a bit of a control freak; Ino was always picking on her for it and telling her to just sit back and let things happen on their own for once. To not be able to control something that was happening to you had always been something that Sakura feared, and to not be able to fight back because you can't touch your attacker was something that she found downright terrifying.

Crossing her arms protectively over her chest, she frowned up at the darkened porch and regal front door, catching her pale reflection in the glass. She slowly walked up the porch steps, listening to the creaking of the boards beneath her sneakers and the laughter of her friends getting closer behind her. She frowned as she thought about how long this little trip would take; twenty-five, thirty minutes at the most? She hoped that would be it, as she was suddenly feeling rather tired and drained.

"So this is it: the famous Hillside Manor," Shikamaru drawled as he stepped up onto the porch beside Sakura. "This is gonna be such a drag. This place hasn't been used in four years, so there's bound to be tons of dust built up, and then my allergies are gonna start acting up. Plus, who knows what kind of pests are living in there? Rats, spiders, flies… what a drag…"

Sakura laughed, feeling her sour mood lighten a bit at her friend's sarcastic personality. "Aw, come on, Shikamaru. I want to be here even less than you do, so just deal with it." She started to take another step forward when Ino spoke up.

"Alright, guys. Remember, if you see any flashing red and blue lights, either hide or run out the back door if you can find it. And if anything else happens that could be potentially harmful to any of us, run like hell outta there, got it?" she said, laughing.

"Joke all you want, Ino," Choji said, uncharacteristically serious. "You can never be too safe since you never know what's gonna happen. Just use your best instincts and stick together."

The group giggled nervously as Ino marched up and opened the door, and Sakura stiffened involuntarily as the door squeaked. "How clichéd," she muttered, smirking at her own reaction and how Ino snorted, apparently having thought the same thing.

A hush fell over the five of them as the stale air from within the house washed over the doorway. A puff of dust came up from the floor as Ino pushed the door back even further to reveal a darkened foyer and the depths of the house beyond.

"_Awe_some!" Naruto stage-whispered. "This place is totally creepy!"

"Shut up and go inside, already," Shikamaru grumbled, kicking Naruto in the back of one of his knees.

* * *

Sakura peered down at the dust-covered sofa warily, wondering if something would jump out from beneath the cushions if she sat down. Shrugging her shoulders, she slowly lowered herself to the edge of the couch and faced the flickering candle that Ino had found and lit with Shikamaru's lighter. "So, what exactly are we doing now?" she asked, watching apprehensively as Ino reached into her oversized purse and pulled out a long, flat box. "And how the hell did you fit that in your purse? What is it, anyway?"

Ino laughed. "Take a chill pill, Sakura. This," she said, setting the box down onto the floor between them and drawing everyone else's attention. "This is a Ouija board."

Choji grimaced. "Put it away, Ino. Those things are dangerous. There're other ways to talk to spirits _without_ putting up a neon sign to draw potentially evil spirits straight towards us."

"Please, Ino. This is stupid," Sakura said nervously. She figured if Choji didn't like this Ouija board thing, then she definitely shouldn't.

"Don't worry, guys," Ino said testily. "The reason why bad things happen to _some_ people who use Ouija boards is because they don't do it right."

"And what, exactly, makes you an expert on Ouija boards all of a sudden?" Shikamaru drawled, settling down beside Ino on the floor.

"Yeah, I wanna know how you got so smart all of a sudden, Blondie," Naruto said, smirking as he sat down in front of Sakura's couch.

Ino scowled. "You're blond, too, Naruto. I wouldn't be cracking blond jokes if I were you. But in answer to your question," here she reached into her purse again, pulling out a booklet. "I read the instructions. Duh!"

The group chuckled collectively and settled into a circle around the board. Sakura sighed and lowered herself to the floor beside Naruto. "So, how do we do this? Is there chanting involved? Because if there is, I'm so outta here."

Ino rolled her eyes from her seat on the floor across from Sakura. "No, you dolt. Everyone, put your hands on the planchette, like you're hardly touching it. The whole point is to have a spirit spell out answers to questions that we ask, and it can't do that if people control the planchette."

Naruto and Ino were the first to put their fingers on the small, heart-shaped pointer. Next, Shikamaru and Choji slowly put their fingers on the edges. Sakura stared at the one empty spot on the plank, deliberating as to whether or not she really wanted to participate in something so juvenile. Sure, her friends would laugh at her if she left now, but she felt strange sitting in an abandoned house and playing with a spirit board. What if something were to happen, like the board actually worked? Logically, it's more likely that one of her friends would be moving the planchette, most likely Naruto or Ino. But if something _were _to happen, it would shake all of her logical beliefs down to their foundations.

"You still there, Sakura?" Shikamaru asked, peering at her in that slightly-concerned-for-you-even-though-it's-so-troublesome sort of way that he had.

"Ah, what the hell," Sakura sighed, lifting her hands and placing her fingertips on the empty space of the planchette. She rolled her eyes as Ino grinned excitedly.

"Alright, remember: don't move it! Let it move by itself, got it?" Ino asked, practically squealing with anticipation. When everyone nodded, she closed her eyes, completely intent on looking mystical and all-knowing. In a giddy, yet commanding voice, she said, "Alright, listen up spirits! If any of you are here, we invite you to come have a little chat with us. And by the way, if you're evil or something, screw you! We don't wanna talk to you, so go away!"

"_Ino_," Choji hissed. "Haven't you watched _any_ movies about the paranormal? You don't provoke something like that, you idiot!"

"Shut up, Choji, I know what I'm doing." Ino cleared her throat, and spoke again. "Are there any spirits who'd like to speak to us?"

The group waited, hands brought together over the planchette, and waited with bated breath. After a few moments and no movement from the small pointer, Sakura huffed.

"This is so stupid. Can I go home now?"

The planchette shifted, and everyone gasped as it moved directly to the "No" at the top of the board.

Ino smirked. "The spirits say you can't, so I guess you'll just have to stay."

Naruto laughed and Sakura glared at her best friend. "You moved it. I thought you told us not to mess with the planchette, Pig."

"Alright, fine! I moved it. But for real, now: if there are any spirits who'd like to speak with us, please come forward!"

Ino stared intently at the planchette beneath everyone's fingers. Naruto, serious for once, did the same, his eyebrows furrowing in concentration, as if thinking hard would cause something to happen. Shikamaru had a glazed look to his eyes, as if he was sleeping with his eyes open. Choji looked uncomfortable, chewing on his lip and staring at his fingers. Sakura looked around at her friends' faces, looking for any signs of anyone thinking of moving the planchette again. She almost wanted it to move by itself, just to see what everyone's reactions would be, hers included.

A sudden, deep growling sound erupted from nearby, causing everyone but Choji to jump. Shikamaru snorted as if he had been about to snore and was woken up suddenly, and Naruto managed to muffle his shout of surprise. Ino squeaked and Sakura stared, horrified, to her left, where she had heard the noise.

Choji laughed nervously. "Sorry, um… I only had three servings tonight at dinner before Ino called me… So, that was my stomach, not something supernatural."

There was a collective sigh of relief, and Naruto muttered something about a "supernatural appetite" under his breath, and Ino giggled.

There was a pause where no one spoke, concentrating on the board again. "Maybe the spirits don't like Ino," Naruto stated. "That could be why they aren't responding."

Ino glared at the other blond over the candle. "Well, if you're such a smarty-pants, why don't _you_ ask the questions? Hm?"

Naruto grinned devilishly. "If you insist, Barbie." He made a show of straightening up and focusing on the planchette again, and spoke in his loud, obnoxious way, "Yo, spirits! Do you think Ino's annoying?"

Everyone watched the board even more intently, seeming even more interested in the answer the spirits would provide to such a question than they were before. After a few moments, Sakura's skin started tingling unpleasantly, as if she had walked through a spider's web, and her skin prickled with goose bumps. She felt her heart skip a beat and she gasped in shock as she felt the planchette move beneath her fingers, only this time, it felt as though it was actually moving by itself and not by someone in their circle.

After the initial shock wore off, Naruto burst out laughing. "See? Even _ghosts_ think you're annoying, Ino! It said 'yes,' ha-ha!"

Ino scowled murderously as Shikamaru said through his chuckling, "It's okay, babe. Annoying isn't a totally bad thing."

"Alright!" Ino growled. "Enough already. Ha-ha, Ghostie, very funny. Now that we've all had a laugh, how about you tell us your name?"

The planchette moved more readily this time, and everyone read aloud the letters it pointed out. Sakura whispered each letter in awe, "U-C-H-I-H-A."

"Uchiha?" Ino muttered. "That's a name I haven't heard in a long time…"

Naruto scrunched up his face in confusion. "Uchiha? I've never heard of it before."

"The first owners of this house had that name. That's interesting," Shikamaru stated thoughtfully. "What is your first name, Uchiha?"

Sakura watched silently as the board spelled out 'Sasuke.' Her fingers grew cold and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

"Alright, Sasuke Uchiha. What do you want? Why did you come to speak with us?" Ino asked, grinning euphorically at getting answers from an actual paranormal entity.

Sakura watched in interest, and then horror at what the planchette spelled out: her name. Just as she was about to speak, she felt a puff of cold air at the back of her neck, causing her hair to fan out on either side of her face. She felt her heart skip, and then her chest started heaving as it tripled its earlier pace. She jumped up and spun around to face the couch, fully expecting to see someone sitting there and grinning at the look of shock on her face. Finding no one, she shouted, "What the _fuck_ was that? God_dammit_!"

"Sakura! What are you freaking out about? What happened?" Ino asked frantically, standing up as well. Her eyes were wide with concern and fear.

Sakura stared at the couch, still looking for evidence of a person having been there. Running her hands through her hair and tugging as a sort of last-ditch attempt at bringing reality back, she stated loudly, "_Shit!_"

Suddenly, Naruto was beside her, holding onto her shoulders to spin her around to face him. "Sakura, calm down. _Breathe_, take deep breaths. Come on," he coached, stooping to look her in the eyes. Demonstrating for her by breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, he rubbed calming circles on her shoulders with his thumbs.

Sakura took deep, shaky breaths, trying to calm down and focus on Naruto's concerned blue eyes in the dark instead of the terrifying encounter she had just experienced. After a few tense, silent moments where the only thing she could hear was her own heart pumping frantically, she was finally able to think clearly again. "I don't care who did it," she said, voice low and threatening. "And I don't care how, but it was _not funny_, at all, and I'm not going to sit around and be picked on and scared out of my wits when I have other things to do that are a hell of a lot more productive. So are we going to continue, or not?"

She didn't concentrate on the genuinely concerned and confused faces of her friends, only on her breathing patterns and pushing whatever had just happened as far away from her conscious thoughts as possible. She sat down again, but didn't touch the planchette. "You all can ask the questions and touch the damn thing, but I'll just watch." She pulled her knees up to her chest and crossed her arms over them, deliberately focusing on counting to one hundred in her head until her heart rate returned to a normal, healthy rhythm.

Ino cleared her throat nervously. "Um, okay then. Spirits… um, could you make your presence known to us? Like, move something, bang on the walls, anything's fine."

She had barely finished her sentence before the planchette started flying around the board, constantly going over and over the letters that spelled "get out now." As the group realized what the spirit was saying, the couch that Sakura was sitting in front of was forced away from the wall and stopped inches from hers and Naruto's backs. Sakura screamed and jumped up at the same time as Naruto shouted and fell forward and the candle seemingly blew itself out. With the sudden darkness, the group scrambled as they tried to get up and find any door that led out of the house. Sakura and Naruto held onto each other as they felt along the walls for the front door as quickly as they could in the pitch blackness.

The only thing running through her mind was to escape. She felt this primal instinct to run as fast and as far away as she could, to run away from this unknown presence that she couldn't see or touch, but that could certainly see and touch her. She pulled her arm away from Naruto's large hands and lurched away from him in the darkness, away from this sensation of electric fear and despair that was pulsating from somewhere behind her. She tripped several times, landing once on what felt like a footstool and at one point running straight into a doorway. Whatever it was, she could still feel it behind her, chasing her… playing with her?

She opened the next door that she came across and flung herself inside the room, slamming the door behind her. She sunk to the ground in front of the door, feeling her heart racing in her throat and her head throbbing with fear. She couldn't see anything, but she felt _it _outside the door, just waiting as if it had forever.

Maybe it did.

She strained her eyes as she looked up to the ceiling, as if searching for a source of salvation from this invisible monster. And then it clicked: light, she needed to _see_. If she could see, then she'd realize that this was all just a silly trick her mind decided to play on her. She would see that there wasn't a ghost or monster or whatever this thing was (if it existed at all, which she was now sure it didn't). She jumped up, hope giving her renewed strength as she felt along the wall beside the door for a light switch. Finding nothing, she slid her hands frantically across the wallpaper, desperation heightening her senses as she felt whatever the thing outside the door was seep into the room.

She panicked. She started crying. She whimpered in fear as her hands slid over the walls and _it_ drew closer to her. Her skin prickled in awareness of the other presence, and her tears started becoming streams down her pale face. It was _right behind her_. She could feel all of the air around her being sucked away and replaced by a solid, tangible terror. She couldn't get any closer to the wall, and _it_ was still getting closer, closer…

Her fingers flicked over a hard, smooth plate on the wall. A quick twist of her wrist and the light switch was flicked on, the room brightening with such a welcomed burst of illumination, she nearly fell to the floor in relief.

Nearly. And then she felt that it hadn't left. The irrationality of the situation had prevailed, and her subconscious wasn't getting the hint that, ha-ha, this joke wasn't funny so it had better stop before she had a heart attack and died before she ever had a chance to go to a bar with her friends, lose her virginity, get married, have kids, grow old and feeble, and learn how to knit sweaters for her future great-grandchildren.

She wanted to blink: her eyes were stinging from being opened wide in shock for so long. She wanted to scream: her mouth was open, but why wasn't any sound coming out? She wanted to run away: but something was holding her feet in place.

She whimpered as she felt a line of goose bumps rise up on her arms, and she flinched when a puff of cold, damp air caused her hair to splay out around her face and away from the back of her neck. It was right up against her, even now, with the lights on and nowhere to hide. It was bigger than her, and stronger than her, and more terrifying than she could believe. Part of her wanted to see what was there in the room with her, to see if it really was a monster. The larger part of her wanted to run far, far away and hide for the rest of her life.

She peeked over her shoulder, and screamed when the lights went out again in an angry pop of electricity. Her sweatshirt was torn away from her neck, and she cried out in terror and agony as a deep pain erupted at the junction between her shoulder and her neck.

When the door to the room was kicked open, she sighed in relief. She didn't care who or what it was: as long is it wasn't this _thing_, she would be okay. She would be safe.

Her last conscious thought was of how Naruto always managed to be there when she needed him most.

**~ Part One - End ~

* * *

**A/N:

Once again, I'm terribly sorry to my LAL readers. I feel so guilty uploading a new story when I have one that I love and I can't seem to get motivated enough to work on. My sincerest apologies.

As far as _this_ one is concerned: I plan for it to be written in three parts, each between 10 and 20 pages. This chapter was 11 pages. I'm pretty sure I know where this is going, and yes, Sasuke is the supernatural entity and yes, he is targeting Sakura. As far as pairings go, I'm not quite sure. I think I'll leave it as SasuSaku for now.

**This will become a bit more mature in the next two parts.**

You have been warned. I'm aiming for slightly scary, with a little bit of romance. In the next chapter, perhaps you paranormal fans will figure out precisely _what_ Sasuke is...

I have class in a few minutes, so I've got to cut this A/N short. There's so much more I want to say, but I'll save it. ;) I missed all of my readers, but I hope to figure out an easier way to get online and stuff.

As always:

Much love,

child_of_the_moon

XO


	2. Part Two

_Glancing over my shoulder I see its shape_

_and so move forward, as someone in the woods_

_at night might hear the sound of approaching feet_

_and stop to listen; then, instead of silence_

_he hears some creature trying to be silent._

_What else can he do but run? Rushing blindly_

_down the path, stumbling, struck in the face by sticks;_

_the other ever closer, yet not really_

_hurrying or out of breath, teasing its kill._

- Stephen Dobyns, "Pursuit"

**~ Paralyzed, Part Two ~**

The sound of her alarm clock angrily beeping at her to wake up pulled Sakura Haruno from the fitful world of her dreams to the calmer reality of her apartment's bedroom. Wincing, she turned her head to stare at the red numbers on the display screen, letting the loud, electronic beeping wake her up. She slowly reached her arm over to the off button and pressed down, hearing the solid "click" of the button and the sudden silence that followed.

Sitting up, she massaged her temples with the heels of her hands and grimaced. Her tension headache wasn't going away because she couldn't seem to relax her neck and shoulders after the… after what happened. She still couldn't put any words to what happened that night the week before. She honestly didn't want to think about it, but…

She put a hand to her neck, gently feeling along the puffy, raised edges of her torn skin. It was scabbing over, but it wasn't going away any time soon. It was a reminder of the attack, of the thing that bit her.

She hadn't shown anyone the bite. She was terrified of it actually being something real, of being something that existed outside of her imagination. If she showed someone, she'd have to face the reality of the situation, and she wasn't sure if her sanity could take such a blow.

Shaking off her dark thoughts, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, noticing for the first time that her blankets were across the room. Brows furrowing, she stood up and shivered at the temperature in the room. She walked over to her crumpled blankets that were lying in a heap in front of her open closet doors and stared down at them. It wasn't the first time something like this had happened. The past few nights, she had been making sure to close her closet doors before she went to bed, but she woke up every morning, chilled to the bone, with her blankets across the room and her closet doors wide open. She never thought that she was a sleep walker, but that was the only conclusion she could come to.

Rather, the only _logical_ conclusion that she could come to.

Sakura huffed and decided to leave the blankets where they were. She'd clean them up later. Glancing around her room, she found her towel and reached down to grab it. She froze when she heard a "thump" as something fell down somewhere in the adjacent bathroom. She closed her numb fingers around the plush fabric and pulled it up to her chest, clutching it to her heart like a shield. Her bright green eyes were glassy with the last remnants of sleep, but widened in fear as a new alertness started to sharpen her gaze. She knew there had to be a rational explanation (there is _always_ a rational explanation, after all), and all she had to do was walk to the bathroom door, push it open, and find out what had fallen.

Taking a deep breath to calm her unusually frazzled nerves, she silently traveled the few steps it took to get to the partially open bathroom door, toes sinking into the carpet as if trying to find an anchor to keep the rest of her body from moving any closer to the possibilities that lay behind the door. Reluctantly, she pushed forward, lifting a hand hesitantly to swing the door open. She quickly flicked on the light as the door opened to reveal the source of the noise that had startled her.

It was her hair drier, and it was resting on the linoleum floor where it had seemingly fallen from the shelf beside the sink. A huge sigh of relief blew forth from her lips as she relaxed minutely. She inwardly laughed at herself for suddenly thinking the worst of every situation. All because of one unexplainable incident, everything seemed to have become unpredictable and carried the possibility of becoming terrifying. She had always been fond of formulae and rationalism and the way every variable could be accounted for. But suddenly, when one tiny variable did something unexpected, her entire world seemed shaken to the ground, and since she had never planned for something to go wrong, she didn't know how to put everything back together again. She didn't know where to start.

Pulling herself from her musings, she picked up her hair drier and set it further back on the counter, making sure it wouldn't fall again. As she prepared her shower, she concentrated on her upcoming classes for the day, blocking out any other thoughts that tried to wriggle into her consciousness. She hung up her towel and stepped into the shower, shutting the frosted glass door behind her and closing her eyes as the hot beads of water soaked through her hair and cascaded down her body, running softly over the sore bite mark on her neck.

She frowned, bringing a hand up to gently feel around the wound. When she had first regained consciousness after the attack, she thought that the whole night could be chalked up to coincidences and her own imagination. Ghosts didn't really exist. They simply weren't rational. And her own response to the strange noises (surely just normal noises for the old house), cold spots (the heat wasn't even on since no one was living there), and unsettling feelings (reacting as any normal person would to the imaginary stimuli) was just a vast overreaction on her part coaxed on by her friends' actions and words. Her overreaction had led to her mind being clouded by fear and irrationality, getting lost in the old house, and hyperventilating, which consequently led to her passing out and managing to get abrasions on her neck at some point during her fall.

It was all so easily and realistically explained. So why did she still have trouble believing it? Why was she still so terrified of the dark, of the imaginary things that couldn't possibly be hiding within?

A flicker of motion caught her attention and she whipped her head around to face the thin shower curtain, eyes round with fear. Her cell phone was on the counter, which would make it easy enough to get to, were it not for the fact that her bathroom door was open. If there was, in fact, a burglar and he was anywhere near her bedroom when she stepped out of the shower, she could end up being in a lot of trouble, especially if he was carrying a weapon.

Reaching for the edge of the curtain, she paused, frowning. Since when had she always thought the worst of every situation? Her doors and windows were locked and bolted, which would make it virtually impossible for anyone to get into the apartment without making a lot of noise, which she would have heard earlier. She had heard nothing indicating someone trying to break in, therefore, wouldn't it make more sense for that flash of movement to have been just a shadow caused by a bird or something of the like going by the window in her room?

Withdrawing her hand from the curtain, she returned to rinsing her hair, forcing herself to chuckle at her fear in a sort of last-ditch attempt at getting over the terror threatening to overthrow her thoughts. Humming a shaky tune under her breath, she finished rinsing herself and turned off the water, pushing her hand out from behind the shower curtain to reach for the towel she had left hanging on the hook beside the shower. Grasping at air, she frowned in confusion and poked her head out, staring at the empty towel hook. She could have sworn that she had left it on the hook. Upon looking around the small bathroom, she spotted the blue fabric folded neatly on the end of her bed in the other room.

Taking in a deep breath, she set her jaw and pushed open the shower curtain. "I'm going crazy, I guess," she muttered, placing one foot carefully on the cold linoleum floor. She quickly walked from the shower to the bathroom doorway, peeking around the walls outside the bathroom for anything out of the ordinary. Shivering as she made it to her bed and grabbed her towel, she hastily wrapped the plush blue fabric around her naked body and crossed her arms protectively over her breasts. An increasingly superstitious part of her felt as though something was playing with her, and she had a feeling that she didn't share the same sense of humor.

After drying off a little, she pulled on some clothes and checked the alarm clock on her bedside table. Grimacing at how late it was getting, she pulled on some shoes, grabbed a scarf to tie around her neck for when she was ready to go outside, and checked her bag to make sure her books were all inside. Nodding to herself, she ambled to the bathroom to do her hair. She stopped dead in her tracks when she found the hair drier exactly where it had been when it had fallen earlier, as if she hadn't touched it.

"Seriously?" she growled. "This is _so_ not even close to funny." Snatching up the hair drier, she went to plug it into the outlet beside the mirror above the sink when she caught a dark reflection in the mirror, and it wasn't hers. There was a man in her bathroom, standing behind her, just watching her as she stared in frozen horror at his reflection. His skin was pale, and his hair and eyes were black as coal. She felt a puff of cold, damp air as he leaned closer to her and breathed purposefully into the back of her neck, causing her hair to splay out on either side of her face and exposing the bite mark on the side of her neck. He grinned as she managed to choke out a whimper of fear.

Screaming, she ran out of the bathroom and made a beeline for the front door, slamming it behind her as she ran towards the school.

* * *

"The cops searched the place, said they didn't find any evidence of someone there besides you," Ino said, handing her shaking best friend a hot coffee and sitting down beside her on an old wooden bench outside of a small coffee shop near Sakura's apartment.

Sakura closed both hands around the Styrofoam cup and shook her head disbelievingly. "He was _there._ I _saw_ him. There's no way in hell that I was just imagining it." She took a quick sip of the steaming coffee. After she had left the apartment, and after she was a good distance away, she had whipped out her phone and called the police, telling them that there was someone in her apartment and that she didn't know how he had gotten in. After that, she called Ino and they met up nearby where they waited for the police to show up and ask for more information. They waited after the questioning as the police did a second, more thorough investigation, and Ino decided that it was as good a day as any to skip classes and have a girls' day out. "Therapeutic" she had said, in reference to a chance to go shopping and take their minds off of everything. Sakura just hoped she was right.

"I believe you," Ino said, cradling her own steaming cup of coffee. A few silent moments passed as the two watched the pedestrians pass by their bench, going about their normal routines as if nothing had ever happened. Sakura supposed that on some level it was comforting, but the increasingly irrational part of her decided that it just made her feel more crazy.

Taking a hearty swig of her coffee, Ino stood up and took on a stern expression. "Alright, Forehead. Today is not a day to mope! Today is a day to spend ridiculous amounts of money that _should_ be saved up to pay off college loans. Today is a day to buy a ton of clothes and accessories that we'll probably never wear. Today, today is a day to go to the mall!"

Sakura cracked a smile at her friend's army general pose, with her legs spread apart and her hands on her hips and a determined, authoritative expression on her face. She wondered what she did to deserve such a great friend. "Alright, Pig." Taking a fortifying gulp of coffee, Sakura stood up and tightened her scarf around her neck. "Where are we going first?"

* * *

Sakura didn't have any trouble keeping her mind off of what had happened that morning, and she was sure that was Ino's intention the whole time. She didn't even start worrying about going home until the cab pulled up outside of the mall late that evening.

Looking around for an excuse to not go home, she eyed all of the bags that the two had been lugging around the whole day. "You sure you didn't want to go back and check out that sale again over at Victoria's Secret? We hardly spent any time in there today," she said, glancing longingly back at the mall entrance.

Ino's brows furrowed as she watched Sakura shifting her weight from one foot to the other and glancing over her shoulder at the double-doors of the mall entrance. Turning to the waiting cab, she knocked on the window and waited for the driver to roll it down. "Sorry about that, but I don't think we'll be needing a ride."

Sakura watched on curiously as Ino and the cabbie talked for a few moments and Ino grinned. "Thanks!" Ino called, as she stepped back onto the sidewalk to stand beside Sakura once more.

Sakura stared at her best friend, a confused look on her face. "So… are going to keep shopping, or what?"

Ino grinned. "I have a better idea, actually."

"Better than getting new bras, sexy lingerie and killer perfume?" Sakura asked sarcastically. She knew that Ino's absolute favorite store was Victoria's Secret, so it was odd that Ino wanted to go do something better than take advantage of the sales. For the life of her, she didn't even have a clue as to what Ino was thinking.

"Hm… probably not, but I don't want my dad getting mad at me for maxing out his credit cards." They both laughed and picked up their bags. "I was actually thinking about having a girls' night _in_ to accompany a girls' day _out_."

Sakura's steps slowed down a bit, her face showing a bit of nervousness at the thought of going back home. "As in a sleepover? At my place?"

Ino slowed her pace to match Sakura's. "Yup. You mind if I call Hinata and have her come over too? It's a lot more fun with more than just the two of us."

Sakura took a deep breath. It was a good idea. It'd help her to not think about what had happened, and maybe she would return to normal now. "Sure, I don't mind. I haven't got any ice cream, though. We should probably stop at the grocery store on the way. It's gonna be a bit of a walk."

"I'll have Hinata meet up with us at the grocery store and we can catch a ride with her."

* * *

"That doctor is _such_ an asshole!" Ino exclaimed around a mouthful of black raspberry ice cream. "I mean, if he were_ my_ doctor, I'd sue him!"

Sakura laughed. "Well, his bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired, but he's a great doctor. House is practically a genius."

"I agree with Sakura," Hinata said quietly, smiling softly as she painted her toenails purple. "He's incredibly smart, even though he's kind of mean."

Ino huffed. "I suppose he's kinda smart. But that guy with the accent? _Gor_geous. I'd _kill_ to have him as my doctor," she said, giggling.

Hinata and Sakura laughed along with her. "Chase is pretty handsome, but I think I'd prefer House," Sakura said.

Ino and Hinata stared at her in shock. "But… Sakura," Hinata spluttered.

"He's _old_!" Ino cried.

Sakura slumped into the couch cushions, laughing hysterically. "Th-that's not what I meant!" she exclaimed between bouts of laughter. "I meant as a doctor, I'd prefer him!"

After a while, Hinata looked towards Ino, curiosity shining through her pale eyes. "So, Ino, how did that 'ghost hunt' go last week?"

Ino spun around, full-gossip mode switched on, and said, "It was totally _epic_! Like, you have _no_ idea how awesome it was! Ghosts are real, like, legit they are _real_ and they can make things move and stuff and it was just totally crazy! Naruto screamed like a girl, and even Shikamaru was scared! Sakura actually ran off and got lost and passed out 'cause she was so scared!"

Hinata swiveled her head around to stare at Sakura with concern. "Really? Were you okay?"

Sakura frowned and crossed her arms protectively over her chest. "I'm still not convinced it was a ghost." Ino started to protest, but Sakura continued, "First off, Ino brought that stupid Ouija board–"

Hinata's eyes widened in shock and she turned to look at Ino, "You didn't! Please tell me you didn't."

Ino's brows furrowed in irritation and confusion. "Why does everyone always think using a Ouija board is so bad? I mean, come on."

Sakura watched as Hinata, who was normally the calmest of the three, became nearly hysterical with worry. "Are you _serious_, Ino? Have you done _any_ research about Ouija boards and the paranormal activity that nearly always comes with using one? If you're not experienced, actually, scratch that: even if you _are_ experienced with Ouija boards, you can't control what comes through. You're literally creating an open door for any evil thing to come through if it wants to. Sakura," Hinata said, turning towards her with worried pale eyes. "What happened to you? What made you run?"

Biting her lip nervously as she allowed her thoughts to return to that night, she took a deep breath. "Well, keep in mind that I'm not convinced any of this was… paranormal or anything. It can all be explained rationally."

"Just tell me what it seemed like, Sakura. It's important," Hinata said, her voice calmer and less strained, but her eyes were still tense with concern.

"Ino was using the Ouija board, and at first nothing happened, but Naruto asked if the spirits thought Ino was annoying. It moved to the 'yes', and we all freaked. So they asked what its name was, and it said… what was it Ino? It started with an 'S.'"

"Uchiha. Sasuke Uchiha," Ino said, bringing her ice cream-laden spoon up to her lips. "The Uchiha family were the first owners of the house, apparently."

"Yeah, it was Sasuke. So they asked what he wanted, and he spelled out my name. I'm still convinced it was one of them, probably Naruto, but right after that, there was this… puff of air or something, right on the back of my neck. Like, it actually made my hair move, and I'm pretty sure it was either a draft of air or something from like an open window, or someone was playing a prank on me."

"She flipped out. It was weird, because I _know_ none of us moved the planchette, and none of us were behind her when she jumped up and screamed."

Sakura waved a hand agitatedly. "Whatever. I may have even imagined it. But after that, Ino asked it to do something so we knew it was actually there, and the couch was pushed away from the wall and the candle blew out. We all freaked out, which is when I ran off trying to find the door. I opened a random door, started hyperventilating 'cause I couldn't find the light switch, and then passed out after I turned it on. Naruto kicked open the door and found me and carried me outside."

"You left out the part where you were screaming bloody murder before Naruto found you on the floor. He said you were holding your neck like you were in pain or something," Ino said, frowning. "Speaking of which, I thought it was weird that you just started wearing scarves all the time. Did you actually hurt your neck or something?" she asked, gesturing with her spoon to the white chiffon scarf wrapped securely around her friend's neck.

Putting a hand to the bite mark on her neck, she said hesitantly, "Yeah, I must have hit something when I fell." She silently prayed that her friends wouldn't ask to look at the wound. She was struggling to hold onto the idea that it was just a coincidence that it was shaped as a bite mark, and allowing someone else to see it would only cause the terrifying reality of the situation to hit her full force.

Ino swallowed her mouthful of ice cream and looked at Sakura's scarf curiously. "Naruto actually told me that he thought it looked like someone had bitten you."

Hinata reached towards Sakura's scarf, and stopped a few inches away. "Is it okay if I look at it?" she asked.

Sighing, Sakura nodded. "If you must." She slowly unwrapped the thin fabric from around her neck and lifted her hair up to expose the wound.

"Oh, God," Hinata whispered in shock.

"What?" Ino asked, all but throwing her ice cream bowl to the floor and jumping up to look at her friend's neck. "Holy shit, Sakura! 'Must have hit something' my ass! You idiot, someone _bit you_! What the hell!"

Quickly wrapping the scarf around her neck again, Sakura huffed. "I could've been hallucinating, and the mark could just coincidentally look like someone bit me."

Grabbing Sakura's shoulders, Ino gave a quick, jarring shake and growled. "Sakura Haruno, you're taking the 'logical' excuse too far. So far, in fact, that you're being _illogical_. Something was in that house, and it bit you. Those are the facts, so accept them and stop running from them."

Sakura pried Ino's tight hold from her shoulders and shrunk back into the couch. "Whatever. You can think what you want, and I'll think what I want. Can't we just agree to disagree for once?"

Before Ino could get another word in, Hinata gently put a hand on Sakura's forearm. "Has anything strange happened since? Anything that you weren't quite sure was normal?"

"You mean _besides_ someone managing to break in and scare the shit out of me? Not really. I mean, I've been sleepwalking apparently."

Hinata frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

Sakura huffed. "Well, I've been waking up in the morning with my blankets across the room and the closet doors open. Maybe I'm just getting really warm during the night and I sleepwalk with my blankets over to the closet like I'm gonna put them in or something."

"Maybe… If something else happens, please don't hesitate to call me. My reverend could come over and bless the apartment or something for you," Hinata offered, earnest gaze locking with Sakura's uneasy eyes.

"Sure, sure. I don't think anything's really going on," Sakura said, waving the conversation off with an air of nonchalance. "If we keep talking about this stuff, we'll freak ourselves out. Let's just get back to watching some chick-flicks or something. Has anyone seen the light green polish?"

The rest of the night eventually dissolved into fits of giggles, nail polish fumes, and two gallons of black raspberry ice cream. It was well past midnight before the three decided they were too tired to stay up and finish _Remember Me_, and so they made sure to lock all of the windows and the door (Sakura triple-checked every lock while the girls were brushing their teeth) and retired to Sakura's room, all standing around the full-sized bed with different levels of contemplation on their faces.

"Well, I suppose we could _probably_ manage to fit…" Ino said, a finger touched to her lips in thought.

"Yes, but someone's bound to fall off at some point," Hinata pointed out, frowning.

All at once, the three shouted, "I call the middle!" and jumped onto the bed, managing to bump elbows and knock heads together before Ino wriggled into the middle space and Sakura and Hinata managed to flop down onto the sides.

"Night, girls," Ino sang happily, wrapping an arm around Sakura's waist and snuggling into the pillows. "I'll make sure you don't fall off and hit that big forehead of yours, Billboard Brow."

"Gee, thanks, Pig," Sakura muttered, grimacing at the nickname.

Hinata pouted from the other side of the bed, "But what about me?"

* * *

Sakura woke to the sound of someone moving around somewhere in the apartment. Heavy footsteps sounded over in the living area, and at first she thought one of the girls was up, perhaps having gotten up to get a drink from the kitchen or something.

And then the footsteps got closer; they crossed the threshold into her bedroom, to her bed. Whoever it was, they were right in front of her. Why would Ino or Hinata just… lurk like that? Of the two, Ino was more likely to play pranks while everyone else was sleeping. But it couldn't be Ino: her arm was still wrapped around her waist, heavy and relaxed in sleep.

Hinata, then?

Her skin started crawling when she realized she could hear Hinata snoring softly on the far side of the bed. And then she screamed as two pale, cold hands landed soundly on her shoulders, pinning her to the bed.

Or at least, she tried to scream. She couldn't open her mouth: it felt as though someone had super-glued, stapled, and duct taped her mouth shut, since no matter how hard she tried to open her mouth or make any sound at all, not a whisper made it past her frozen lips.

She tried pushing the stranger's arms away, but her body wouldn't move. His face came into view, and her eyes reluctantly traced their way up from his strong jaw, to his smirking lips, to his perfect nose, and then to his cold, dark eyes.

And then she heard him say her name. It was the most entrancing voice she had ever heard in her life, as if she could hang on every word he would ever speak and never get tired of hearing him, as if he could tell her to do anything and she would do what he asked without question.

It was terrifying.

He leaned closer, whispering her name in such a way that she began to blush. She couldn't think straight, and a tiny part of her that had been pushed to the farthest corners of her mind was screaming that he was the man that broke in, and he was dangerous, and something _was not right_.

And then she felt his cool lips make contact with hers, a gentle kiss to chase away her rationality. He whispered against her trembling lips with a smirk and that deep, enticing voice, "You will be mine."

And as he kissed her again, and she stopped wondering what was wrong with this whole picture, she opened her eyes for a split second and saw that his had turned a burning, bloody red.

"Sakura!" Ino screamed, shaking her friend by the shoulders. "Wake up! You're having a nightmare, snap out of it!"

Sakura pushed away from Ino's firm grip and fell onto the floor, terrified and crying. Was it a dream, even thought it felt so real?

Ino and Hinata crawled down from the bed and sat beside Sakura; Hinata rubbed soothing circles on her back while Ino held her hands and wiped away her tears. "Was it that bad?" Hinata asked quietly.

Sakura just sat silently for a few seconds, trying to push away whatever it was that had just happened.

"It was just a dream," she whispered. _'I think.'_

**~Part Two - End~**

_

* * *

_

_**Well, then. I wanted to add more, but I felt that what I wanted to add would fit better with the final part. This one isn't short by any means, of course, but for some reason I'm just not quite happy with eleven pages and just under 5,000 words. lol**_

_**Once again, to all my LAL readers - I'm terribly sorry that you've waited so long for another update. I'm working on it, I promise!**_

_**If you find any errors, please let me know in a PM or a review. I'm such a grammar nazi but sometimes I miss things, even after proof-reading multiple times. XD**_

_**Let me know what you think! I know that it's kind of a weird story, but that's what I'm aiming for. ;) The excerpt at the beginning is actually something that I read in Stephen King's **_**Insomnia_, which I just started reading for inspiration for this story. It's slow reading at first, but I highly recommend anything that he writes: he's basically amazing. My personal favorite is _The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon_, since it made me feel like I couldn't go out into the woods without feeling paranoid. In fact, I still can't... haha...  
_**

_**The next and final chapter will be a bit more intense (I hope), with a lot more SasuSaku stuff. I'm not aiming for fluff, and some of their interactions will be kind of strange. Just a head's up. :)**_

_**Also, any guesses as to what Sasuke is? A chibi drawing goes to anyone who guesses correctly. ;)**_

_**DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me. Makes sense, right?**_

_**Please review!**_

_**Much love,**_

_**child_of_the_moon**_

_**XO  
**_


	3. Part Three  End

Naruto and all characters found therein (c) Masashi Kishimoto.

* * *

In the darkest moments of the night,

Are we ever truly alone?

**~Paralyzed, Part Three~**

Sakura woke to the sensation of being watched at about 1:00 in the morning a couple days later. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing up, and gooseflesh peppered her bare arms and legs. She had a good idea as to who, or what, was in her room with her, but she refused to acknowledge the thought of whatever _he_ was being real.

'It was just a dream that time,' she thought desperately, sleep scurrying away as fear made its home in her conscious mind.

She went to reach for her blankets to pull them over her head, to block out reality. Then she realized two things: the first was that her blankets weren't on her, and the second was that she couldn't move. If the first time was anything to go by, then she could hazard a guess as to whether or not she'd be able to call for help.

She peeked through her eyelashes towards the foot of her bed, praying to whatever deity might hear her that there wasn't anything lurking there again.

Her heart jumped to her throat when she saw the dark silhouette of that man from before. His eyes were black now, and he just stood there at the end of her bed, watching her as she tried to pretend he didn't exist. There was an air of morbid amusement around him, and Sakura shivered in fear. She squeezed her eyes shut, silently telling herself that he wasn't there, this was just a dream, he didn't exist…

She felt a pulse of thick, ominous energy rush over her bare limbs, causing her flesh to pucker with gooseflesh again. There was no way she could ignore his presence, not when she could _feel _him when she couldn't even see him. She let out an involuntary whimper when she opened her eyes and he was at the side of her bed, and she startled herself with the noise, thinking that she couldn't make it to begin with.

She watched in terror as he put his cold, surprisingly substantial hand on the bed on the other side of her legs so he was leaning over her, and shivered again as he sat down, caging her in without actually touching her. His slightly amused, coal-black stare pinned her to her bed, and she felt a tear sneak out from the crease in her left eye, rolling down her temple and leaving an icy trail behind.

This was too real to be a dream.

His eyes watched the small drop of water as it made its way to her hair line, and his expression became contemplative. Sakura watched in horror as his pale fingers reached towards her face, not knowing whether or not he was going to hurt her. His cold thumb made contact with her skin, effectively splashing the proverbial bucket of ice water over her mind and erasing any doubts as to whether or not he was real. He gently swiped towards the crease of her eye, wiping away the tear track as her breath hitched at the gesture.

She fully expected him to stop touching her face, having taken care of her tears. She stopped breathing when his thumb traveled seductively towards her lips, following the contours of her face and causing her flesh to heat up with a blush. This man (he couldn't be anything else, because weren't ghosts supposed to be insubstantial, mist-like?) had to have found some way to break in, although the how's and the why's were beyond her.

Her train of thought screeched to a halt when his fingers slowly made their way down the side of her jaw, tracing the bone structure and dipping beneath her trembling chin to find her racing pulse at her neck.

With an amused tone, he suddenly said, "You're terrified." He grinned, dragging his cold fingers to her collarbone and tracing his way to the hollow at the base of her throat.

The combination of his expression and his haughty demeanor sparked a note of indignation in Sakura, and she opened her mouth to give a sarcastic retort without thinking, but was stopped short when his eyes zeroed in on her parted lips and the grin fell from his face.

He moved closer to her, bending so that tendrils of his dark hair tickled her cheeks. In the moment before their lips touched and she realized what he meant to do, she found her voice and thought to deter him when she asked, "Why are you doing this?"

She couldn't stop the feelings that bubbled up when his cold lips landed on hers, however irrational they were. She couldn't stop the blush when the hand that was still positioned at the base of her throat moved slowly downward and settled over her left breast, causing gooseflesh and an unexpected hardening of the nipples (due to the cold, she reasoned, and not the act itself.)

She found herself breathing heavier when he pulled back and brought his lips to her ear. "Because," he whispered, and the word brought her question back to the front of her mind like a suddenly cold, harsh wind. "Simply because I can."

When he moved back to look her squarely in the face, she tried to scream. His eyes were that bloody red again, and suddenly she realized with a startling clarity what he was.

He may have been real, but he wasn't human.

* * *

"Sakura!"

Worried voice. Familiar. Male…

"Hey, Sakura!"

Hard surface beneath her cheek. Something warm on her shoulder, shaking…

"Hey! Wake up! You're gonna miss your class!"

She knew that voice… Naruto?

Finally managing to open her eyes, she tried to make sense of the blurriness that surrounded her. Suddenly, bright blue eyes snapped into her line of vision, and she felt her eyes straining from trying to focus on them.

"Hey, sleeping beauty," he said, grinning slightly, but she noticed the slight narrowing of his eyes. He was worried…?

"Hey," she mumbled, sitting up at the lunch table in the school cafeteria and stretching her back, feeling the satisfying "pop" of her spine and the surrounding muscles getting back into place.

Wait a minute… lunch table? Cafeteria? School?

When had she fallen asleep? She didn't even remember leaving her psychology class for lunch…

"I… I guess I was tired," she said, half-heartedly attempting to make a joke of it. Judging by the way her friend's eyes narrowed further, it wasn't anywhere near comical.

"Yeah, and pardon my French, but you look like _shit_."

She blinked at his choice of words, but silently agreed. No amount of cover-up could hide the deep purple splotches beneath her bleary green eyes. She had managed to lose a noticeable amount of weight in the weeks since their haunted house excursion, and it was obvious that her baggy sweaters couldn't conceal her altered appearance from her surprisingly perceptive best friend.

"I mean, have you eaten _anything_ in the past few days?" he continued, poking her in the ribs for emphasis. "Your clothes are hanging off of you, and your skin's all pale, and you look like you haven't slept in weeks."

Sakura hid her face by rubbing her eyes and cheeks vigorously, not wanting him to see the truth of the latter part of his statement reflected in her expression.

"Sakura," he said, his tone dropping to a concerned murmur. "What's wrong? Please talk to me."

Biting her lip, she thought back to her sleepless nights, which were occurring more and more frequently. The _thing_ (she refused to think of him as a man) seemed to have come up with a routine, which used to take place a couple times a week. Now, it would show up every night, without fail, between the hours of 1:00 and 5:00 in the morning. She would wake from a seemingly peaceful slumber to her blankets having been flung off. Then, she would find herself unable to move (and, depending on the thing's mood, unable to speak), whereupon the thing would appear somewhere in her room.

Lately, it had taken to appearing on her bed, reclining on his side and staring at her for an indeterminate amount of time. That intense, coal black stare never ceased to intrigue and terrify her at the same time. There was something about him, something that tugged at her mind. She eventually realized that she was terribly curious beneath all of the fear. The few nights where he would let her speak, she would ask questions. He would never answer, just smirk, or stare. Always the staring…

Sometimes he would touch her. Usually he only touched her hair, or her face, or her arms. Sometimes he would play with her fingers, just watching the way her painted fingernails would catch the limited light cast by the moon outside her window.

Sometimes he was a little more… bold. Those were the nights she feared the most. It's not to say that she didn't feel any pleasure from his actions; quite the opposite, in fact. Perhaps she feared these nights because of the fact that she enjoyed the way he kissed her, or the way he would trace her lips with his cold fingers, or follow the contours of her neck with his tongue. Perhaps it was because of the way his eyes would flash blood red when things got a little too heated, when she feared things would go further than she truly wanted.

Recently he seemed to enjoy talking about random things. He seemed to be interested in her schooling, asking her about her classes and why she chose them. He really terrified her when he asked about her friends, or her family. He would ask why her mother always sang while she cleaned up after dinner, or if she knew that her father preferred oatmeal to cold cereal in the mornings.

She realized that he asked her about these things to unnerve her. How could he possibly know these things? Was he constantly watching her? Did he watch her family? Her friends? Was he saying that he could hurt them, since he knew so much about them?

Though he never told her in so many words, an unspoken command had been given to her. She knew she should never tell anyone about him. He would know about it if she did, and she was too terrified to know what the consequences would be.

"Sakura?"

For the second time, Naruto's troubled voice brought her back to reality.

"Oh," she said, startled. "I'm… I'm fine, Naruto. Really." She smiled a small, tight-lipped smile and gathered her belongings, realizing her bag was a lot heavier lately than it used to be. "Just… You know. Having trouble sleeping lately. Stress from school and stuff."

She tried not to pay attention to his frown and narrowed eyes. He knew she was lying. But, as he always had in times before when Sakura didn't feel like talking, he let it go.

For the time being.

"Alright," he conceded, standing up as well. "Lemme know if I can do anything. You can come over to my place and we'll play Gears or something. Who knows: maybe getting exhausted from being owned over and over again might make you sleep better," he said with a wink. He grinned before ruffling her hair and walking off.

She smiled softly as she adjusted her bag on her shoulders and walked to her next class. Spending a night away from her apartment wasn't such a bad idea…

* * *

As soon as she turned the handle of the front door of her apartment, Sakura knew something was off. It was too silent, and despite the sunshine outside, the interior of her small living room was ominously dark. The small smile and happy mood she had held onto during her walk home from Naruto's apartment evaporated like a drop of water on hot pavement.

She froze with her hand on the doorknob, eyes wide and darting from left to right, searching for him. Who (or what) else could so easily cause the unease she was feeling? She felt his presence, felt that he was waiting and rather irate, and she really didn't want to go in.

Looking around the hallway outside her apartment, she found that she was alone. No witnesses, whether to whatever the thing was going to do when she walked in, or to what she was about to do.

Taking a deep breath, she tried for an exasperated appearance. "I don't know what your problem is," she said to her seemingly empty apartment, knowing full well that she would seem like she was talking to herself to anyone who passed by. "It's not like I said anything you wouldn't want me to."

The room darkened a little more, and a cold breeze wafted past her, and she thought she saw a pitch black shadow move in her bedroom at the end of the hallway.

"Good grief, you're like a jealous, overbearing boyfriend, you know that?" she called out, brows furrowing in fear-fueled anger. "Now could you please stop being all doom-and-gloom so I can come in? If you're gonna be staying here, the least you could do is act civil."

She hadn't thought her theatrics would work.

She watched as the darkness seemed to disintegrate in the living room and converge in the bedroom, casting what little she could see of it into an almost tangible blackness. Blinking in surprise, she stepped into the apartment and slowly closed the door behind her. She could feel him watching from her room, as she set her backpack down and toed her shoes off. Without looking to her room, she uttered a careful "thank you" and padded to the kitchen, intent on making dinner and possibly studying after her meal.

She could sense that he was watching her the rest of the afternoon, and the darkness didn't ever fully leave her room. No amount of nightly visits and one-sided conversations could ever get her comfortable with the fact that there was this menacing, inhuman _thing_ staying in ('haunting,' her mind would helpfully supply) her apartment.

Surprisingly, he left her alone that night. She awoke to her alarm, well-rested and covered in her warm blankets.

Daring to smile at the welcome change to her morning routine, Sakura stood and prepared for school, taking her time and humming softly to herself as she got dressed and fixed her hair.

When she finished and had her books tucked away in her bag and her neck covered in a scarf (to hide the scars now, and not the grotesque scabs), she stood at the doorway to her apartment and looked about. Nothing was out of place, and the entire atmosphere was peaceful and calm, completely unlike the past few weeks fraught with paranoia.

Nodding once to herself in a contented manner, she left her apartment, locked the door, and walked to school, a slight bounce in her step.

* * *

'There _has_ to be another explanation besides _ghosts_,' she thought to herself just before her lunch period. She frowned, thinking of any possibilities that she might know about.

'The library might have something. Looks like I'm skipping lunch today,' she thought, just as the bell rang for class to be dismissed.

At first she didn't find a whole lot. She didn't feel like wading through a ton of books for the tiniest tidbits of information, so she decided to use the information seeker's best friend: the internet.

'What should I search for, though?' she asked herself. Biting her lip, she stared at the blank search bar.

Reaching out her hands to the keyboard, she sighed. "Well, what are my symptoms?" she mumbled, then blinked. "Duh. Stupid, why didn't I think of that in the first place?"

She typed in the keywords "insomnia" and "hallucinations," and waited for the results to pop up. Skimming the excerpts from each result, she frowned.

"Lack of focus, overeating, drowsiness… no," she muttered. "Most common sleep disorder… loss of coherency… no."

She scrolled down the page, reading softly to herself as she went. "Lying in bed waiting to sleep… not tired… what's this one?" She clicked the link, and read a short personal description by a woman suffering from insomnia. The woman apparently had auditory hallucinations that sounded like someone was next to her, breathing loudly.

"Hm." She scrolled down to read comments on the thread, and they proved to be useless, offering neither explanations nor solutions. Huffing, Sakura went back to the search results.

After finding nothing, she sighed. This wasn't going to be as easy as she had thought.

"Unless…" she whispered, racing back up to the search bar. She added the words "man in my bedroom" to the previous keywords and watched the results change.

The first thing she saw was a question by someone suffering from a sleep disorder who woke up "seeing things." Thinking it might prove promising, she clicked the link.

A few interesting keywords came up through reading the woman's story, and after scrolling down to see replies, she found one where the person saw "a demonic looking man" standing in the doorway. It seemed that this disorder, whatever it was, caused such realistic dreams that you didn't even realize you were dreaming.

She frowned. Perhaps this was what she was suffering from? Choosing not to simply end the search here, she highlighted a phrase that seemed familiar to her – sleep paralysis – and copy/pasted it into the search bar.

By the time the bell rang to signal the end of the lunch period, Sakura had narrowed her findings down to two possibilities. Either she really had a ghost haunting her (which others around the web deemed highly plausible and completely logical), or she was suffering simply from sleep paralysis, which caused her auditory/visual hallucinations and could quite possibly be a mind-over-matter sort of issue.

If the latter were, in fact, the truth, then she'd be able to tell Ino with much gusto and satisfaction, "Ha! I told you so!"

With that in mind, and a slight, relieved smile on her lips, Sakura logged out, grabbed her textbooks and went to her afternoon class.

* * *

All was quiet when she got home. She looked around warily, her hand still on the doorknob, waiting for something to move or for _it_ to appear.

Nothing.

Blinking in surprised relief, she shrugged and closed her door behind her, toeing off her shoes and setting her schoolbag down. She began to think that maybe this really was all just because of a lack of sleep, and that this man who had been terrorizing her the past several weeks was, in all actuality, a figment of her imagination.

Frowning slightly at a small twinge of doubt, she called, "Hello? Ghost guy?"

She listened intensely, half worried that she would hear something.

"Are you home?" she shouted.

After no response, she shrugged. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, in her opinion. Feeling as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, she walked down the hallway to her room and changed from her school clothes to some comfortable sweats and a t-shirt. She double-checked her bed to make sure the blankets were still there, and hummed to herself as she went back to the living room.

Grabbing a hefty book from the shelf, she sat down on the couch and searched for any mentions of sleep paralysis.

"Sleep paralysis is most often associated with narcolepsy, a neurological condition in which the person has uncontrollable naps. However, there are many people who experience sleep paralysis without having signs of narcolepsy. Sometimes it runs in families. There is no known explanation why some people experience this paralysis. It is not harmful, although most people report feeling very afraid because they do not know what is happening, and within minutes gradually or abruptly are able to move again; the episode is often terminated by a sound or a touch on the body.

"In some cases, when hypnologic hallucinations are present, people feel that someone is in the room with them, some experience the feeling that someone or something is sitting on their chest and they feel impending death and suffocation. That has been called the "Hag Phenomena" and has been happening to people over the centuries. These things cause people much anxiety and terror, but there is no physical harm."

She frowned. "Well, I'd hardly call him a 'hag,'" she muttered. "He's damn fine when he's not scaring the crap out of me. What's this…?"

"You may be able to minimize the episodes by following a good sleep hygiene:

• getting enough sleep

• reduce stress

• exercise regularly (but not too close to bedtime)

• keep a regular sleep schedule

In severe cases where episodes take place at least once a week for 6 months, medication may be used."

She snorted. The irony of the situation was such that she couldn't possibly get enough sleep and lower her stress levels _because _of the hallucinations. The last line caused her to think, though. Would her case, in which she was experiencing these "episodes" every night, be considered a severe case?

That is, if it were sleep paralysis at all.

She looked up from the book, and searched the room around her. Everything was as it should be, and there were no signs whatsoever of the man from before. She didn't even feel the strange foreboding that she was accustomed to feeling whenever she was home. Brows furrowing, she set her book down on the coffee table in front of her, being sure to leave it open on the page she had been reading.

Her courage increased as she stood and walked around her apartment, looking in every dark corner and every doorway for her unwanted visitor. The mere fact that she was finding nothing aside from a few dust bunnies in the linen closet gave her the proof she needed: there was no ghost haunting her.

Uttering a soft chuckle, she turned around to face the kitchen.

"Celebratory I'm-not-crazy dinner," she suggested to the air around her, making her way to the refrigerator with a smile.

* * *

She couldn't breathe.

There was something huge on her chest, and she couldn't breathe. Her eyelids were forced shut and heavy, as if there were weights attached to them to keep them closed. Her mouth was open, but she couldn't scream. She could hear blood rushing through her carotid arteries into her brain, the tempo her heart was beating in a staccato rhythm far too fast to be healthy. Her arms were pinned at her sides, her legs likewise immobilized.

She was panicking. She was going to die. She didn't know where she was, what was happening, or why, but she knew without a shadow of doubt that she was going to die.

Some faraway spark of rationality was calling to her, saying she wasn't going to die, she had just read about this sort of thing not even twelve hours ago…

"Sleep paralysis, huh?"

She knew that voice.

"Science has an answer for everything now."

And like a bucket of ice-cold water being dropped over her head, the realization that she wasn't going to die hit her and her eyes flew open.

She could breathe again. Sucking in greedy gulps of air, she brought her hands to her racing heart, finding that she could once again move her limbs. She looked around her room to find the source of that ominously familiar voice, and saw him standing near her desk.

His back was to her, but she could see the edges of a book sticking out away from where he was holding it in front of himself. He caught her gaze over his shoulder, and she flinched as his eyes flashed red.

"I found this on your coffee table," he said by way of an explanation, lifting the book up so she could see it past his shoulder. "An interesting theory, this sleep paralysis." He turned and walked to the bed, sitting down as Sakura scooted back against the headboard in terror.

Holding the book in his lap, posture relaxed, he chuckled. "Don't tell me you thought you were hallucinating," he mocked, dark eyes locked with hers. One of his cold hands slid up her bare calf. "Is this not proof enough for you that I am real?"

She flinched under his touch, and stuttered, "It's not r-real. It's s-sleep par-paralysis."

Shaking his head, he turned back to the book, one long, pale finger underlining a few sentences as he read aloud to her in his deep voice, "'most people report feeling very afraid because they do not know what is happening, and within minutes gradually or abruptly are able to _move_ again; the episode is often _terminated_ by a _sound or a touch on the body_.'" Smirking, he glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes. "It's called 'paralysis' for a reason, Sakura."

She froze. This man _did_ have a point.

Wait! What was she doing, listening to a hallucination? This wasn't right, he wasn't real!

He closed the book softly, standing up and setting it on the desk by her bed. "You know," he said, tone conversational and light. "I remember the first time we met, Sakura. Do you?"

She remembered two _possible_ instances; the time when a man who looked (eerily) similar to him had appeared in her bathroom as she prepared for school, or the time when he first appeared in her bedroom, pinning her to her bed and kissing her. She nodded, fearing what he'd do if she gave the wrong answer.

He stared into her eyes a little longer, and smirked. "No, I don't think you do. You see, you weren't by yourself at the time. You were in the parlor, sitting on the floor with your friends around that silly board. That blond boy… what was his name…"

Without meaning to, Sakura whispered, "Naruto?" The scene this man was describing was unnervingly familiar.

"That's it," he said, grinning. "Naruto. He'd asked if I thought your other blond friend was annoying. I'd not answered up until that point, so I reached over you and answered. I watched the gooseflesh rise on your arms as I brushed against you. Quite a response, one I hadn't received in decades, to be honest. It was addictive, so I followed you the rest of the night, ultimately back to your apartment, but before I could do that, I had to mark you."

He watched as she reached to the puckered scars on her neck, her eyes shining in horrified realization. His eyes took on a predatory gleam as she started to tremble in terror. "You…" she whispered, and then stopped. "This can't be…"

He leaned over her, bringing his face close to hers. "The next time we met, you were going about your morning routine. I had a great deal of fun moving things around on you, getting a taste for what frightened you and what irritated you. You seem more afraid when you can see me," he stated, bringing a pale hand up to brush her sleep-mussed hair from her face.

Her breath was coming in quick, cold gasps, her heartbeat skyrocketing as he drew closer to her.

"I have to admit, however, that my favorite memory of you is of that first night here," he said softly, running a finger along her jawline. "Kissing you is almost as fun as driving you insane."

She couldn't help the small noise of surprise and outrage as he touched his lips to hers. She felt him smirk against her lips, and she lifted her eyes to his, not at all surprised – though no less disturbed – to find the irises a bloody red.

Pulling back to kiss the side of her mouth and down to her collarbone, he whispered between touches of his lips to her skin, "Do you remember what I told you that night, Sakura?"

She fought to breathe, let alone remember an incident which had occurred so long ago. She felt one of his hands glide from her ankle to her hip, and rushed to remember, blushing in spite of herself. "Y-you," she stuttered, gasping softly as he gently bit the side of her neck. "You said… ah… I'm y-yours."

He smiled against her neck, and she felt his cold hands lift the hem of her nightshirt, skimming her sides with his long fingers. Reflexively, she brought her own hands to his broad shoulders and suddenly froze.

"You're… real?" she asked, already knowing the answer but still hoping she was wrong.

"As real as you are," he said, mouth turned up in a sardonic smirk. "Only, maybe not quite so alive."

Catching his meaning, Sakura gathered her courage and pushed against his shoulders, half-expecting him to disappear or move whatever it is ghosts do when confronted.

He did neither, merely pulling her shirt up higher to expose her ribs to the cool air of her room, acting as if she hadn't done anything at all.

"W-well," she began, still attempting to move him away, "you're… what, a ghost? Is that what you're telling me?"

He cocked his head to the side, bringing his gaze (still red) to meet with hers. "I suppose so. I've heard other terms through the years. It really just depends on how I decide to manifest myself. Like right now," he chuckled darkly, bringing his fingertips up underneath her shirt to brush against her breasts. "Right now, you could call me an incubus, perhaps?"

Her eyes widened at his implication, knowing full-well she'd be powerless to stop him if he decided that was what he wanted.

His eyes narrowed dangerously and he smiled as he took in her reaction. "If I decided to throw things around or pin tables to the ceiling, you might call me a poltergeist. If I wandered about doing the same thing over and over, you'd call me a 'residual' ghost."

Sakura stared at him, taking in for the first time his clothing and his general appearance, and decided to take advantage of his talkative attitude and her own ability to finally converse with him. "How long have you been a ghost? What do you want?"

He paused as if to think, fingers toying with her scrunched-up nightshirt. "I'm not entirely sure. Time doesn't pass the same way. As far as what I want," he drawled, and the leer he sent her made her skin break out in gooseflesh just as her face flushed a deep red. The more he spoke, the less terrifying he seemed to become. Her thought processes were getting tangled and she was finding it hard to think straight as his hands began to travel to other places.

"Aside from you, I want revenge."

* * *

Sakura spent the entire next two days cooped up in her house or in the public library, eyes glued to the computer screen and town records respectively. Mostly her intense research was to placate the ghost (she remembered his name was Sasuke), but also to keep her mind far, far away from what he did at night now that he had "enough energy."

She was in utter bliss while he was all over her, fingers here, tongue there, other things… in other places. She couldn't think straight enough to say anything but his name, something he seemed to take great pleasure in.

It was when he finally let her sleep, or left her alone during the daytime, that she was able to think (and feel deep mortification) about the things that had occurred. Most of the time, she tried to pretend they hadn't happened; however, things like that weren't exactly normal, and thus nearly impossible to play off.

She was being haunted, and the ghost haunting her wanted more than just to scare her.

This brought her back to why she was in the public library instead of in class. She was hunched over a large dusty book of town records which dated back to the eighteenth century, searching through population registries for the name he had given her: Itachi Uchiha. According to Sasuke, he had murdered his entire family – Sasuke included – and he wanted him or any descendants found. He wanted to avenge the senseless slaughter of his family.

Sakura had searched the internet, coming up with very little, if anything. There had been a mention of several murders in 1822 on one outdated site, but the information had been speculative and unhelpful, not even mentioning a name aside from the family surname. Assuming the date given was correct, Sakura would be looking for descendants.

Huffing in exasperation (and exhaustion), Sakura was about to close the book when a name seemed to pop out of the page at her.

There he was. "Sasuke Uchiha," she whispered, fingers tracing the laminated sentences surrounding his name. The Uchiha family seemed to be one of the town's oldest affluent families, along with the Yamanaka (Sakura blinked in surprise), Nara, and Hyuuga families. Turning the page, Sakura's fingers found the lines of the Uchiha family tree, which ended with about a dozen names, two of which she recognized as Sasuke and his brother, Itachi.

She leaned further over the huge tome, eyes drinking in each word with interest. If she found the information Sasuke needed, he'd promised to leave her alone. The sooner she found it, the better.

A long account of the brutal murder of the entire Uchiha family caught her attention next. She scanned the names and compared them to the family tree. Itachi's name was nowhere to be found in the description of the slaughter, which could mean that he had moved on and had children of his own (she groaned at the thought of tracking his descendants down.)

Again she was about to close the book, when yet another name popped out at her from what seemed like a newspaper clipping.

"The body of Itachi Uchiha was found on April 17th in the woods outside his family's Hillside Manor. Upon investigation, the undertaker declared his death a suicide, inflicted by the same weapon used to murder the entirety of his family, both immediate and extended. Blood stained his hands and clothing, though whether the blood was only his or that of his kin remains unclear. It is also unclear whether he was the sole perpetrator, and if his participation in this catastrophic event is authentic or contrived. Investigations are expected to continue for some time. Funeral services for the deceased will be held…"

Sakura sat heavily at this revelation. Itachi died the same night Sasuke's family was murdered, which meant that there was no way Sasuke could get his revenge.

A folded piece of parchment stuck out from behind a family photo that had been glued to the old pages of the records book, creating a small air pocket beneath the preservative laminate. She frowned, looked about the empty reference section around her, and dug a thin metal ruler out from her bag. Creating a small, jagged incision along the top edge of the photo through the plastic that covered it.

The paper she pulled out was handwritten, short and to the point. The date written was April 18th, 1822, and it was signed by the constable at that time, though she couldn't decipher the actual name. She scanned the contents of the missive, her eyes widening with each word.

A terrible sinking feeling settled in her stomach.

* * *

"Naruto!" Sakura exclaimed, finding her friend leaning against the wall outside her apartment door as she came down the hall. "What are you doing here?"

The blond straightened from his position and frowned. "Is that any way to greet a concerned friend who stood outside your door for hours waiting to see if you'd come home, wondering if he'd have to go to the hospital and see if you'd checked in there with a deadly disease?" His frown twisted into a wide grin and he opened his arms wide to receive a hug.

Sakura happily complied. "I'm sorry, I just wasn't expecting you. And what made you think I'd gone to the hospital?" she asked, fitting her key into the lock and twisting.

"Oh, nothing, aside from the fact that little Miss Perfect Attendance was missing from school for two days," he said with a shrug, taking her bag from her shoulder as she stepped into her apartment. "You missed it, Ino threw a hissy fit when—" Naruto froze as he stepped past the entryway. "Damn, Sakura. It's cold as hell in here. Get your heat turned off or something? Hey, earth to Sakura!"

She blinked as he grabbed her shoulder and gave a light shake. "What? Oh, sorry," she muttered, brows creased in worry. "Heat must be set low or something."

"Set low, my ass," he grumbled, rubbing his arms after setting her bag down and closing the door behind him. "It's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey in here. What?"

Sakura shook her head. "You _would_ say something like that." She reached for the thermostat in the entryway, pretending to turn it up so Naruto wouldn't catch on that it was set at 70 even though the room felt about 40. "Want me to make some coffee?" she offered.

Naruto chattered as she set about the task of preparing coffee for the two of them, but she only listened to about half of what he was saying. She kept one eye on the hallway leading to her bedroom and one on the coffee pot the entire time, wondering if _he_ would show up with her best friend sitting right there.

Once they were settled on the couch, Naruto wrapped an arm around Sakura's shoulders and took a sip of his coffee. "So, you feeling okay?" he asked, his blue eyes staring straight ahead at the blank screen of the television.

She wanted desperately to tell him everything, but just as she opened her mouth to speak, she stopped. It wasn't a matter of whether or not Naruto would believe her. It was a matter of what _he_ would do if she told anyone. Her unwanted guest wasn't just a semi-transparent mass of energy. He was powerful enough to take a solid form, to touch not only inanimate objects, but human beings. He could immobilize her without batting an eyelash, and the limit of his power was impossible to figure out.

Her smile was fake when she said she was fine, that she just needed a couple days off. She pretended to ignore his slight frown as she took a tentative sip of her hot coffee.

"You do realize I always know when you're lying, don't you?" he asked, his voice low and worried.

He had always been deceptively perceptive. She sighed and set her coffee mug down on the table in front of her.

"Look, Naruto," she uttered, voice quiet and eyes flitting around the room. "I _can't_ tell you. It's not something that I can share with other people."

His arm tightened the tiniest amount around her shoulders. "Can't, or won't? I don't know what's going on, Sakura, but I can tell you're not okay. You've lost weight, you're constantly spacing out, and you don't need Ino here to tell you those bags under your eyes are humongous."

He was getting too close to figuring out what was going on. She could practically _feel_ Sasuke watching, almost felt the brush of his fingers against the back of her neck…

Naruto put down his half-empty mug knelt between Sakura and the coffee table, gently grasping her hands between his own. His hands practically swallowed her fidgeting fingers up, and Sakura kept her gaze fixated firmly on a loose thread hanging from the cuff of his long-sleeved orange shirt. If she looked into those honest blue eyes of his…

"_Sakura_," he whispered. "Tell me. I know something's not right." He paused, searching the living area around him as if he'd heard or felt something. Brows furrowing, he turned back to peer up into Sakura's downcast face, looking for an answer that she was trying so desperately to keep hidden. If he found out, he'd think she was crazy. And even if he didn't come to that conclusion, they both could get hurt.

He raised his hand to rest it against the side of her face, the warmth a startling contrast to the sudden icy chill she felt encasing her spine. Her eyes widened, "Naruto…"

The lights flickered.

She saw something black form over Naruto's shoulder mere seconds before the table flipped and Naruto was tossed roughly away from her.

The apartment went black, and Sakura screamed as she felt herself get dragged down the hallway and thrown into her room.

She heard Naruto shout her name just as the door to her bedroom slammed shut.

* * *

She could feel him in the room with her. If she closed her eyes, she imagined he would look like a swirling pitch-black mass of energy, coiling and twisting and hulking over her like a thundercloud. She needed light.

She stood up, arms straight out and fingers searching frantically for some sort of light switch along the walls. She bumped into a box which she recognized as left over from the move-in, and was able to map out where she was in her room. A few more feet to her left would be a floor lamp.

She was hyperventilating, and the closer she got to the lamp, the closer _he_ got. He was right behind her, she felt the cold seeping into her spine, could practically feel him breathing down her neck. She was crying, a dizzying mix of frustration and terror providing the energy needed to move ahead those last few inches. Her fingers brushed against the pull string, and her fist closed over the beaded metal string and _yanked._

One second she was staring into the printed lampshade, and the next she was staring down eight feet to the floor of her room, the popcorn texture of the ceiling digging into her back and flaking off into her hair and down to the floor.

She tried to scream, but found her mouth was sealed shut. Her arms were clamped to her sides, and her legs were flat against the ceiling. Her eyes watered from her efforts to move and make a noise.

"I thought you said you were mine, Sakura."

Her gaze flew towards her bed, where she saw Sasuke sitting with his elbows resting on his thighs and his hands clasped loosely between his knees. His gaze was on the floor, but she knew his eyes were the color of blood; she could feel his anger like a flame held against her skin.

"I'm quite sure I made it clear I didn't want you talking to _anyone_ about our little secret," he said, his deep voice calm and level; but she could see the tension in his muscles from her spot on the ceiling.

'_I didn't tell him anything!' _she wanted to scream.

He stood suddenly, and glared balefully at her form. Sneering, he moved to stand beneath her, staring up into her face. "Would you care to explain yourself?"

And suddenly, she could speak. She felt the invisible force sealing her lips together disappear altogether, and she whimpered, "Please, please just let me down! I did all that you asked, and I found something!"

He cocked an eyebrow and tilted his head. "Oh?"

Sakura found her body dragging along the ceiling until one side of her connected with a wall, and then she slid down and tilted until she was upright, but still wasn't touching the ground. Her arms were still pinned to her sides and her limbs were completely immobile.

Sasuke walked toward her, and stopped when his face was mere inches from her own. "Speak," he commanded, and his red eyes seemed to glow.

She blinked away the tears that wouldn't stop forming, trying to see him clearly and gauge his expressions. "I-in my front left pocket. I f-found it hidden in the records book," she explained, praying inwardly to any higher power that he wouldn't kill her when he found the information she'd smuggled from the library.

She watched as his brows furrowed even further, confusion and exasperation evident in his features. He reached into her pocket, leaning into her and pushing against her body as he took his time pulling out the folded parchment.

She jumped – or would have, had she not been paralyzed – when she heard Naruto shout her name and pound on her bedroom door. Sasuke didn't even flinch, but instead focused on unfolding the paper and slowly taking in the handwritten statement. He froze.

"F-from what I could tell, your br-brother… he," she began, flinching every time Naruto banged on her door.

Sasuke didn't blink. She watched as his eyes scanned over the same sentence several times, as if he couldn't believe his own eyes. "A-according to the constable, y-your family, or at least a g-good chunk of them, were part of an organized… crime syndicate," she muttered, fearing his reaction.

"My family… no, that's not…" he mumbled, as if to himself.

Taking advantage of his confusion, she pushed on. "I-I also found some old news articles, about bank robberies and murders. They all took place r-roughly around the same time as when your family lived in this town, and there were almost no instances after the m-massacre." She watched his face for any change in expression, gaining courage when she saw none. "Your brother… he was doing what he was told was the right thing. He committed suicide the same night."

Sasuke's face was blank. Naruto kept pounding on the door, shouting for her over and over to say something, damnit, and to unlock the door.

"Sasuke," she whispered, knowing he could hear her perfectly fine over the noise. "Who killed you?"

He finally blinked, and in the millisecond it took to close and open his eyes, they were back to their original coal black color. "I…" he mouthed. "He didn't…"

She felt her fingers twitch, surprised at the sudden movement. Tentatively reaching out an arm, she pressed her hand to the side of his cold face. "Sasuke," she said softly.

"I… did," he whispered. "I saw them… there was blood everywhere, father at his desk with his hand on his pistol. Mother on the floor in the kitchen… my aunts and uncles in the lounge and dining room. We had had a family party; I don't know what we were celebrating... Father gave me my first pistol, and I had gone out to show my friends in the woods behind our property. When I got back, they were all dead. I… I didn't even think of anything, just that I had nothing left. I put the pistol to my head… Itachi—" he stopped, and Sakura watched as his expression crumbled. "My brother walked in and shouted for me to stop just before I pulled the trigger."

Naruto shouted her name again, and she heard him slam into the door in an attempt to break it down. "Sasuke," she said, her eyes shining with new tears. "You don't need revenge. Your brother was good, and he must have loved you. That's why he shouted for you to stop." She brought her other hand up to cradle his face and caught his gaze with hers.

"You can let go now, Sasuke."

* * *

When Naruto finally managed to break down the door, he found Sakura in a heap against the far wall of her bedroom, a crumpled piece of paper clutched in one of her fists. He ran to her and enveloped her in a relieved bear hug. She grasped his shirt and held him close, tears soaking through to his shoulder.

"It's okay," she whispered. "It's okay, it's okay."

**~Part Three - End~**

**~Paralyzed - End~**

* * *

_So I wasn't kidding when I said I wanted it to be slightly scary, but a little romantic. I was gonna aim for a scarier ending, but I've discovered I just can't _do_ unhappy endings. To be clear, Sasuke moved on and is at peace knowing his brother wasn't the evil douche he thought he was. lol Well I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it (to be honest, it freaked me out sometimes when I was writing in the dark.) Thank you for the reviews etc. :] I promise to focus more on LAL now that this is out of the way (forgive me for being such a procrastinator!)_

_As always, much love,_

_child_of_the_moon_

_XO_


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